A new piece (2003-07-16). The Greek title in the lower-right of the image enumerates to the prime number 4657. The tetraktys itself is the ancient Pythagorean holy symbol composed of ten pebbles, or dots, arranged in a perfect triangle, representing the first four sequential integers, 1, 2, 3 and 4, such that the whole figure was thought to be symbolic of the union of the point (1), the line (2), the plane (3) and the solid (4). 4657 contains in itself the next four digits beginning again with the 4, so that it suggests an extension into the three dimensions beyond the third/solid of the 4. The sum of these, 4+5+6+7, is 22 which is the natural number of connecting paths that occur when ten points are placed in the matrix pattern of the original tree of life which the kabbalists patterned after the earlier Pythagoreans (cf. Sepher Yetzirah). I chose to name this piece for the tetraktys because I saw in it the ten pointed figure of the tetraktys itself [see that it consists of one spheroid near the top, two beneath that, then three lower, then four?]; I chose to call it a collapsing of the figure because the Pythagoreans were averse to non-integer numbers, and feared irrational values, though these latter form the very foundations of this present image as it could not be calculated without them. [composed in Apophysis]